The New International Economic Order and Political Party Economic Ideology: The Case of the Social Democratic Front (SDF)of Cameroon
A Talk delivered by Dr Lucas Tandap*, at the Africa Centre, London, July 8, 1999
Fellow Cameroonians,
Friends of Cameroon,
Ladies and Gentlemen:
I am privileged to be able to briefly examine with you the National Economic Salvation Programme (NESPROG) of the Social Democratic Front (SDF) within the context of the New International Economic Order.
I wish to thank Mr. Sarli Sardou Nana, the Administrative Secretary, SDF-UK for making this possible. As he said, I am here in a private capacity. What I will be saying to you this evening represents my personal opinions and should not in any way be taken as the policy of the United Nations or official SDF policy. Any deviations from the official understanding of the issues should be ascribed to me and not to the United Nations, National Executive Committee (NEC) of the SDF or any other organ of the Party with which I have had no prior consultation.
I wish to point out that I was not directly involved in the write up of NESPROG. However, I can say without fear of contradiction that I was one of the promoters of the need for a policy document of this nature that would form the basis of national and international debate. I was indeed happy that NEC and the Chairman bought the idea and that Mr. Susungi accepted to put the ideas together for discussion and adoption.
I also wish to clarify staff regulations of the United Nations specify that while staff “are not expected to give up their national sentiments or their political and religious convictions, they shall at all times bear in mind the reserve and tact incumbent upon them by reason of their international status.” In other words, what I am doing here tonight, I would gladly do for any of the other political parties if they requested me to evaluate their economic development platform. This is healthy within the concept of governance, preemptive diplomacy, conflict resolution and understanding each other better. These are among the mainstream ideas for peace and sustainable development as upheld by members of the United Nations.
Allow me to borrow heavily from the ideas of Statesmen and scholars such as Mr. Julius Nyerere, former President of the Republic of Tanzania now Chairman of the South Commission who has dedicated his life to the understanding of these issues and one on the very few African Heads of State who carried his intellectualism in and out of the State House; Prof. Adebayo Adedeji, former United Nations Under-Secretary-General and Executive Secretary of the Economic Commission for Africa who was the brain behind the African Alternative Framework to Structural Adjustment Programmes and now the Executive Director of the African Centre for Development and Strategic Studies (ACDESS) as well as many other experts on modern African development with whom I have had the privilege to work with.
In the book Recolonization: GATT, the Uruguay Round and the Third World, Nyerere points out that at different periods until the Second World War, Spain, Portugal, Holland, Britain, France, Germany were proud of their colonial empires even when they did not give them that name. They saw no reason to hide their total political and economic domination over others. This was upheld by military power - which had rarely to be deployed while its existence was understood or at least believed in by the colonized. Through this domination, the economic and other interests of the colonial territories and their peoples were subordinated to those of the metropolitan power whenever there seemed to be any possibility of conflict.
Since 1945 there has been a change. National independence has been accepted as a universal right in the statutes of the United Nations. It has been accepted among the peoples of the erstwhile colonial powers as well as among those of the former colonies who had for long been demanding it. Military occupation of another country against the wishes of the people of that country is now internationally condemned.
This means that colonialism in the traditional and political sense is now almost a thing of the past. Even the 'gun boat diplomacy' which sometimes supplemented or preceded it, and which was indulged in by other powers outside Europe – like USA - has to a considerable extent been replaced by 'covert action' on the part of the Great Powers. But even 'covert action' by them against governments judged hostile to their economic or strategic interests can be expensive; in democratic states it can also arouse opposition within the country conducting it.
Thus, the ruthless pursuit of economic interests by any of these traditional means is either impossible or has very strong disadvantages, however strong a country may be. But powerful nations still seek to spread their domination, and as far as possible their control, over other nations and areas. They still seek to ensure that their domestic interests are served regardless of the interests, or needs, of weaker nations and peoples. The strategy has merely been changed to take account of the rise of nationalism in the Economic South, the world-wide spread of ideas about Human Rights and the rights of Nations to independence, and the existence of the United Nations.
The new strategy is based on the use of economic strength against weakness and dependency; on technological domination face to face with technological backwardness; and on inherited cultural domination combined with control of international information structures.
There are many people in the world - in the field of politics as well as those less active in public affairs - who sincerely believe that the post-1945 period has marked the triumph of genuine internationalism, and of interdependence of equally sovereign nations. They point to the United Nations and its Agencies, the World Bank, the multitude of world functional associations, institutions, and meetings, and to the trade and communications links between all parts of the globe. They believe also that the world's rich are helping the world's poor to overcome their poverty and underdevelopment through Aid and loans and technical assistance. Such people - as well as those to whom the use of strength against weakness is a natural and indeed progressive human trait - would condemn all talk of neo-colonialism or economic colonialism.
Unfortunately, such people do not know - or do not understand - the realities of power which underlie the operations of most of these institutions, and which wage constant and too often -successful war with the purposes and ideals for which they were set up. Most ordinary people have heard about Aid. It is from the rich countries in the Economic North to the poor countries of the Economic South. They have never heard of 'Aid' from the South to the North.
What these innocent people do not realise is that through the workings of the present international economic arrangements, wealth flows almost all the time from the poor 'developing' countries of the Third World to the industrialised and rich countries of the developed world. It flows from the primary producers to the industrialised countries, from the ignorant to the knowledgeable.
Tens of billions of dollars flow every year from the Economic South to the Economic North through movements in the terms of trade which have been adverse to the underdeveloped countries almost continually since the 1950's. The prices of primary commodities like cotton, coffee, cocoa, copper etc. etc. - which are the major export products of the Third World - go down in relation to the prices of machinery, lorries, capital investments of all kinds, and most manufactured goods. To an ever-increasing extent, Third World countries sell cheap and buy dear.
Wealth flows also from South to North through financial mechanisms. For example: in the last two decade poor nations have found that the Interest Rates on loans they incurred earlier have been increased by their creditors without consultation. They borrow to meet these 'obligations'. And so get further and further into debt even as they transfer huge amounts to their creditors in debt service.
Again, wealth flows through the South's purchase of knowledge - through fees for education and training, through the purchase of books, through subscriptions to vital information agencies, and through payment for the use of patents, or trade marks, or production licenses. And so on.
Yet the poor nations of the Third World borrow money, or buy knowledge, or produce primary products for export rather than food for themselves, in order to invest in development - in a less poor future - or to meet their basic human requirements after natural or economic disaster has hit them.
The intellectuals and governments of the Third World have understood the iniquitous effects of the post-1945 world economic order for a very long time. In 1973 they came together and demanded negotiations leading to a new - and more just - International Economic Order. In the wake of the oil crisis of that year, and the work of the OPEC, the matter was put on the World Agenda. Slowly and grudgingly talks about how to organise the negotiations began. The Brandt Report urged the need for them in 1980, which made some concrete suggestions about what could be done.
But even as they talked, the industrialised countries organised themselves to resist pressures from the OPEC and the Third World, and the publication of the Brandt Report almost coincided with political changes in the major countries of the North. The North has always resisted any structural change in the international economic arrangements, which appears to threaten their economic domination of the rest of the world.
The Uruguay Round purported to be the eighth in a series of trade negotiations held under the auspices of GATT, aimed at encouraging international trade through reduction of tariff and non-tariff restrictions on imports. But in fact it is fundamentally different from the previous seven 'Rounds'. It is a complex undertaking, involving many different but simultaneous negotiations at different levels, which taken together could redefine and rewrite the rules for international trade and those for other new and important spheres of international economic relations.
In essence, it is an attempt to restructure and refashion the rules of the international trading system to make this even more favourable than at present to the interests and concerns of the major trading nations - the industrialised countries of the Economic North. If the attempt succeeds, Nyerere warned, there would indeed be a New International Economic Order. But it will be even more iniquitous and inimical to the development aspirations and needs of the poor developing countries than the Order against which they have been protesting for so many years. The situation after the eighth Uruguay Round is just what Nyerere and his team predicted.
The scientific and technological revolution of the 1970s and 1980s has given birth to the staggering advances in the communications and information technology. Now the tempo of the revolution has been shifted into higher gear to cope with the events of the 21st century. Transactions across the seas and oceans at a pace never thought of before have become a household reality. Long distance transactions have been reduced, not only in time and geographical distances, but it has also led to a redefinition of the location of economic production and the marketplace. A "made in Japan" tag may be carried by goods produced or assembled in Singapore, Malaysia or the Gulf States by a Japanese production conglomerate.
The industrialised world immediately embarked on reorganizing economic production based on the comparative advantage of industrial location in a global setting. They also redefined lines of mutual interests and comparative advantage for joint ventures that would remotely profit their domestic economic operators. The different initiatives under GATT and WTO speak for themselves.
Furthermore, the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development (UNCED) also known as the Earth Summit, which was held in Rio de Janeiro in Brazil in 1992, placed environmental resources under global commons – the global village - whose management is now the concern of all. The idea of globalisation and the global village means that resources and their rational exploitation have become the responsibility of all members of the United Nations. It is the multi-national management initiative that is the driving force economic management, the market and market forces which are now largely controlled by the laws of supply and demand operating across national boundaries.
It is no longer a question of whether one wishes to compete in a global arena, but how one does so effectively. Most businesses in the early stages of "going global" focus on strategic alliances to reach and exploit the profits of new markets. In businesses that see themselves as most successful and most global, many more members of top management are foreign born. Performance is the measurement not of nationality or race. Business and not national interests now tend to prevail and political alliances are now increasingly made to safeguard economic interest at the global dimension.
Discussion is centered on three "pillars" in establishing a foundation for global leadership, namely, organizational consistency which deals with how to employ the same thinking and procedures on a worldwide basis in order to capture economies of scope and scale. The second is human resource capability, having the right people in the right place when one chooses to compete and thirdly, customer-focused organizational flexibility; in other words, having the ability to service the whole structure of the market.
It is crucial, therefore, that we understand the underlying issues, sort out our domestic development interests and become active citizens of this global village enterprise and reaping its mutual profits. This idea must become an integral part of our economic and political thinking and action. For globalization means that unless one is competitive there is the risk of being swallowed up or completely marginalized by economic forces which no longer respect national boundaries. He who controls the economy controls the institutions that run it.
It can be validly argued that economic globalization also threatens democracy, communities, human welfare, and the natural environment. This is in recognition of the trend which is seeing the world's corporate and political leadership undertaking a restructuring of global politics and economics that may prove as historically significant as any event since the industrial revolution. This current restructuring is giving rise to strong fears of a neo-corporate dictatorship built on the strengths of the global corporate business with overriding political overtones.
The power of these threats has led to initiatives for a worldwide coordination of resistance against the global market to safeguard local interests against unscrupulous global investment. The unscrupulous global investor more often than not endangers local economic interests. The idea of this nascent worldwide anti-globalization coordination is to provide a platform that will serve as a global instrument for communication and coordination for all those fighting against the possibility of the destruction of humanity and the planet by the global market. It seeks to defend local alternatives and peoples' power.
African countries find it difficult to come to terms with this. Hence their participation in these international actions is timid and most of the time remotely controlled by external interests. Consequently, they more often than not find themselves working against their own interests. Their interests should be the value added to their raw materials before they are marketed and should be reflected in the price negotiations.
How do the ideas in NESPROG fit into all this? NESPROG is a long-term development Programme. It is a necessary exercise in political economy. It submits alternative strategies to improve the business of government and economic management that economically empowers the citizens of Cameroon. NESPROG seeks to revitalise the scenario of the country’s political debate whereby everybody - friend and foe alike, husband and wife, young and old - should begin to discuss ideas not individuals. They should begin to see the development programme ideas of the opposition not as “subversive” but as alternative solutions that must be debated in both a Cameroonian context and a global one.
It is also a message to Cameroon’s partners that Cameroonians have attained the level where a vote to choose a government means the expression of a right to choose between or among alternatives, not just among political leaders and parties but also among alternative economic development programmes. The Programme also seeks to create an enabling investment environment that would promote partnership of Cameroonians with global operators and ensure privatization to the benefit of the Cameroonian as a matter of national policy. This is why NESPROG views any form of liberalization which removes the ordinary Cameroonian business interests from the mainstream of the arguments as not part of the globalization-privatization-liberalization equation.
The Programme asserts that the economy of the country is not performing now, as it should. Consequently, the country's bargaining power at the international level has diminished to the point that it can no longer meet all its obligations at home and internationally.
As you may recall, the last meeting of the G7 saw African countries waiting in the corridors for debt relief. Cameroon was one of those that could be said to have come out empty handed. I strongly agree with Adedeji when he asserts that international charity has become the principal means of relieving suffering in Africa. The longer the charity is operating, the more the economic and social marginalisation becomes ingrained in the culture of Africa, creating despair and apathy.
Added to this material apathy and the undermining of cultures, structural adjustment programmes that have increased the danger of bringing up a second generation of citizens against a background of ever-worsening conditions in the family and in the population at large. Healthcare systems are hopelessly overtaxed with diminishing supplies of medicines, schools have decayed teachers are not paid. Those who graduate cannot find jobs and become “micro-entrepreneurs,” joining the armies of shoe-shiners, taxi-drivers, prostitutes, vendors of fake medicines, pickpockets and loiterers before they join the army of armed robbers in the cities. With impunity, no one cares to account for national revenue and expenditure. The electorate, the ordinary Cameroonian in the village, has become hostage to the people they are supposed to have elected.
In Africa and the other developing regions, IMF and World Bank have exerted pressure for compliance with the exigencies of prevailing markets that are controlled by the Economic North. African societies, on the whole, do not have the internal resources to regenerate and recover from major setbacks. As the dwindling earnings front primary commodity exports are absorbed by debt servicing, the triad of devaluation, inflation and positive real rates of interest makes productive investment and capital accumulation impossible, and the sectors able to generate value-added earnings are marginalised together with the people they employ.
It is also the personalisation and monopolisation of power that has led to the increasing privatisation of the state in the hands of the powerful and has promoted, domestically, a marginalisation process, which has been aggravated severely by the SAPS. The cumulative effect is a state set apart from its society, in which 80 per cent of the population are at the margin.
The NESPROG promises to reverse this situation. Consistent with this belief, the Programme argues that the take-over of economic management by external forces is evidence of economic mismanagement by any government. The document specifies that:
“The SDF, as a social democratic party, is in favor of a market oriented economy. This choice is dictated not only by the imperative of structural adjustment which requires that the state should cease to play the dominant role which it has attempted to do in the past with catastrophic consequences, but more importantly because the free market economy is the economic context within which the empowerment of the individual can take place. The economic empowerment of the individual Cameroonian is a cardinal objective of the SDF because the party believes that all political power comes from the people and the advancement of any nation depends on economic policies which are aimed at ensuring that the individual is economically empowered.”
By addressing structural adjustment programmes as one of the key issue, NESPROG brings to the fore-front the problem of external control of any country’s economic and fiscal policy control. NESPROG is developed around the concept that only a government and its people can determine the structure and functioning of its economy. No external agents, no matter how credible, can replace a government.
NESPROG provides the framework for addressing these problems in a realistic and self-reliant manner. It promises to ensure, among other things:
(a) economic rehabilitation because no society can survive without a well managed economic base for all its people; and
(b) establishing equity in the distribution and facilitation of access to national resources and public goods and services, thereby empowering the people.
How does NESPROG fit the rural Cameroonian into the international arena? The document is fully aware that Cameroon is part of a global village. How well the government performs in economic management depends on how effectively it interacts at all levels with its neighbours and with the rest of the world in the defense of its interests in a manner of give and take. Effective interaction at all levels requires a strong base at home.
There is an acute need to find new global solutions for our local society and economy that are built on local realities and values. These local values must not be surrendered for Western ones for they will introduce alien consumption patterns and distortions in the local production-market equation. However, where applicable, there should be value sharing. This is the idea of the “global village.”
Under the circumstances, what would a New World order look like that could promise “Power to the People” and a better future, allowing them personal and economic development? Such an order cannot be invented; it can at best emerge internationally, worked out within the intricacies of local practices. Economic development for the mass of small peasants is only possible in small, work-intensive units, embedded in a system of collective responsibility. It demands the active participation and creative initiative of peasants, based on democratic forms of co-responsibility at all levels, in local, regional, national and international decisions.
Where international markets distribute unequally, mechanisms are needed which return most of the gains to the rural people. Internationally binding agreements to achieve a 'social market economy' should be possible, guaranteeing a minimum social security for all. The economy needs to be integrated in a system of democratic co-responsibility.
Local democracy is impossible unless peasants can also represent their interests at the centre of national political power. This demands strong organisations. Democracy should not end at the borders of nation states. A wall of ‘noninterference in internal affairs’ can no longer shield human rights violations. An international commitment to secure individual rights everywhere in the world is no longer utopian. The world lacks the will, rather than the means, to do it.
NESPROG does not deal in detail with the social dimensions of the programme. It outlines how the economic sectors can be put together to revitalize the other sectors. However, I see it as giving Cameroon the springboard to emerge in the 21st century as the leading manufacturer and exporter in Sub-Saharan Africa, after South Africa. NESPROG permits external agents only to participate in support of national effort and not determine the constituents of that national effort. To do this every citizen should be made responsible for producing and sustaining the economic, social, cultural and political life of the nation. Enhancing their pride in doing so should be part of government policy.
Let me conclude with adaptations from Nyerere to the effect that there is no poverty of ideas about what Cameroon's problems are, nor how to deal with them - either within or outside the country. The opportunity to express, debate and test those ideas in an open environment, in a Cameroonian context and under Cameroonian leadership which is dedicated to thinking about and for Cameroon's future must be increased and encouraged.
Africa’s relative backwardness in science and technology, and the legacy of it’s long and continuing history of external domination means that the challenges facing Africa are as great if not greater today than they were in earlier periods. But so far we have managed to survive, and survive as Cameroonians, with our own cultures and approach to life. We can do so now, and it is important that we do so.
As Africans in Cameroon we still have a great deal to contribute to the world. And our future cannot be determined without us. Either we acquiesce in a future determined for us by others, or we seize control of it ourselves. We should move from the perpetual assessment of Cameroon and its future to discussing how Cameroon could reassert control over its own fate. The country has to rid itself of two approaches. For it is an illusion that Cameroon's problems will - or indeed could - be solved from outside, and that all the country has to do is ask and be patient. And it is nonsense to say that Cameroon can do nothing to overcome its own troubles and problems. These two notions are causing us to disarm and paralyse ourselves.
To that end we have to think about what Cameroon is and where it is in the world. We have to think coolly, objectively, and without either illusions or bitterness. And we have to think in the context of action, action for Cameroon, by Cameroonians.
I see this as the spirit and purpose of NESPROG.
Thank you for your attention
Dr LUCAS T. TANDAP*, Licence-ès-Lettres, Histoire-Géographie ( Yaounde, Cameroon); PhD. Geography (Liverpool, England)
BIODATA
1. Present position: Programme Office (Environment), United Nations Subregional Development Centre for West Africa, Niamey, Niger (since December 1996). Formerly: Chief, Environment Unit, UN Economic Commission for Africa, Addis Ababa (1987 to 1996)
2. Areas of specialisation: Rural development and general development issues; medical geography; quantitative methods for the social sciences; population dynamics in time and space; environmental management and remote sensing
3. Career profile
(a) 1971-1978: Assistant Lecturer then Senior Lecturer, University of Yaounde
(b) 1978-1979: Associate Professor and Head of Geography Department, University of Yaounde, Cameroon.
4. 1979-1988: Programme Officer. Duties included aassisting in programme development for assistance to member States and co-ordination with intergovernmental and non-governmental organizations..
5. 1979-1988: Special cumulative assignment with the World Health Organisation (WHO): Participated as member of the Steering Committee of the Social and Economic Research Group of the WHO/UNDP/World Bank Special Programme for Research and Training in Tropical Diseases. In the capacity had field experience in social science and medicine programmes and project development, funding, implementation, monitoring and evaluation in Asia, Africa and Latin America by carrying out the following functions:
6. 1988-1996: Chief, Environment Unit, Natural Resources Division, ECA, Addis Ababa..
7. Sine 1996 to date: Team Leader in the ECA Subregional Development Centre for West Africa, Niamey, Niger, focusing on environment and sustainable development programme activities.
8. Recreational: Equestrian sports, tennis, squash, chess
You can send your comments or questions on this paper to Dr Tandap: Ltandap@hotmail.com
References
Nyerere, J.K (1990) Foreword in Chakravarthi Raghavan, Recolonization: GATT, the Uruguay Round and the Third World (The Third World Network, Penang, Malaysia)
Nyerere, J.K. (1993) In Preface to Africa within the World: Beyond dispossession and dependence (ed. Adebayo Adedeji. London: Zed Books in association with ACDESS
Adedeji, A. (1993) “Marginalisation and marginality: context, issues and view points” in Africa within the World: Beyond dispossession and dependence (op. cit.)
ECA (Np). African Alternative Framework to Structural Adjustment Programmes for Socio-Economic Recovery and Transformation (Doc. E/ECA/CM.15/6/Rev.3)
Pausewang, S. (1993) “A New World Order for Third World Peasants?” in Africa within the World: Beyond dispossession and dependence (op. cit.)
Hancock, G. (1989): Lords of Poverty London: Mandarin Paper Backs
Social Democratic Front (1996) : National Economic Salvation Program (NESPROG). Bamenda: SDF
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